Among the oddities of jobs reports in recent years has been that all job growth appears to have occurred among foreign-born workers, both legal and, increasingly, illegal immigrants. The inference some people have drawn is that there is some conspiracy to replace American-born employees with foreigners who would work cheaper. It is likely true that the increase in workers is accounted for immigrants. But the reason there doesn’t appear to be an increase in American-born workers is that we have immense numbers of boomer-baby retirees leaving the work force, along with a lot of slackers. If you think of the workforce as a tunnel, with a certain number of people going into the tunnel at any point in time, a certain number in the tunnel and a certain number coming out, you can see that you need to carefully decompose the sub-groups at any point in time. And right now we have more American-born employees leaving the tunnel than entering it.
All that immigration, if it is legal and if there is vetting on entrants to ensure that they are going to work and have job skills we need, is very beneficial to our economy. We would otherwise have severe labor shortages and lower growth. So don’t fall for those, including my friends at ZeroHedge who generally do good work, who imply that something nefarious is at work here. (ZH Post)
